Lee Seong-bok (1952-- ), the recipient of Kim Soo-young Literature Prize and Kim So-wol Literature Prize, has continually attracted attention for highly imaginative and multi-layered poetry. Influenced by Kafka, Nietzsche and Baudelaire, his first volume of poetry "When Do the Rolling Stones Awake" shocked readers with its daring use of free association to expose the hypocrisy, corruption, and perversity of this world. In this volume, the poet occupies the place of a clinical pathologist who dissects familial and social structures, and meticulously records their gradual disintegration. His second book "Mt. Geum, Nahmae," shaped by the poet's new interest in the East Asian classical literature, largely deals with the question of love's essence. The subject continues to engross Lee in subsequent volumes as well, and he creates an alternative grammar of love to the modern notion of romance. Driven by a spirit of innovation, Lee Seong-bok heralded a poetic revolution that influenced both his contemporaries and younger generation of poets. The critic Kim Hyoun has said of Lee Seong-bok's poetry that "it vastly expands its sphere of meaning to permit endless questions to be raised, not only on an individual or private level, but on the collective and public one as well.

" Moving unceasingly between binary categories, Lee's poetry thus brings into view the fundamental relation that lies beneath human life. Lee earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees in French Literature from Seoul National University. He worked as a professor of French literature and creative writing at Keimyung University.